


No Escape From Reality

by Lucky107



Series: Only You (And You Alone) [8]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: Decapitation, Emotional Manipulation, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hunters & Hunting, Mind Manipulation, Sexism, butchery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-14
Updated: 2018-07-14
Packaged: 2019-06-10 12:25:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,856
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15291495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucky107/pseuds/Lucky107
Summary: Jacob speaks in code, but Staci’s not stupid.





	No Escape From Reality

“That _woman_ ,” Jacob growls and even though the words are not meant for Staci’s ears, the man wilts in Jacob’s shadow like a flower. “I swear. _Useless_.”

'That woman' is undoubtedly Jacob’s lady friend, a Chosen named Diana.

Staci only knows this because Diana has no filter - and a very bad habit of acting outside of orders.

Jacob stalks through the Whitetail Mountains in the dead of night as if in search of an outlet for his pent-up frustration and it’s all Staci can do to tail him like an obedient puppy dog, desperate not to be left behind in the dark forest. He allows his mind to wander to a Whitetail undergoing extensive, but primitive surgery at the St. Francis Veteran's Hospital in an effort to save an infected leg.

Staci does not know her name, but the uncertainty of her survival has got Jacob restless.

Diana mutilated the girl as part of a personal vendetta that was well outside of Jacob’s orders and while her life is in no immediate danger - the Whitetail is _strong_ \- Staci knows that losing the leg will spell the end for her.

Jacob speaks in code, but Staci’s not stupid.

He takes pride in that: he may be _weak_ , but he has never been _stupid_.

At first the Whitetail had been depicted to Jacob's men through stills of a deer eating the flesh of small, helpless animals. Images of a doe with her lips peeled back to expose bloody teeth, tearing flesh from bone, still keep Staci awake at night. More recent images, however, have shown a doe rearing to strike an antlered buck, whitetail versus whitetail. The one thing that remains constant throughout the series is that doe - and with every new still put up in lights, she's become stronger than the last.

Jacob is dependent on the survival of that Whitetail at St. Francis because she will do what he himself cannot: she will dethrone Eli Palmer and hand total control of the Whitetail Mountains over to the Project at Eden’s Gate.

And she will do it all for him unwittingly.

But Eli and his Whitetail Militia are the only hope that Staci Pratt has left for freedom.

In that sense, the survival of the Whitetail at St. Francis is imperative to Staci, too.

Jacob stops abruptly on a bluff that provides a clear moonlit view of the Whitetail Park, as if aware of Staci’s treacherous thoughts, but he only grunts boorishly and says, “Here.”

Staci is surprised to see three large buck hung upside down from meat poles along the stony ledge, their throats slit and their chests carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey as the result of some very crude field dressing. Two of them were fortunate enough to die with their beady black eyes closed, but one stares up at Staci as if by some cruel trick of the light and it forces Staci to turn to the dark mountain vista in an effort to escape from the judgement of its dead eyes.

“That skin needs to come off,” Jacob commands before he offers Staci a large knife.

In his surprise, Staci hesitates, but he doesn't linger on the thought of killing Jacob for too long because it's futile.

Instead, he does as he's told.

The sharp blade of the knife slides through the thin skin of the deer as easily as a sheet of paper slices through a soft office hand and he feels empty as he makes the first incision, like those dead eyes—

“Cat got your tongue, Peaches?” Jacob goads as Staci works the knife along the interior of the right leg, careful not to damage the underlying meat under the scrutiny of Jacob’s watchful eye.

“N-no, sir,” he stammers, but he’s green around the gills. “Sorry, sir.”

“You might be a quick learner, but you’re still _weak_ ,” Jacob derides him, circling in on him like a predatory animal as he works. “It’s becoming difficult for me to justify your existence to Joseph when there are still no signs of your little playmate, Deputy Caine.”

 _Meat_ , Staci thinks as he works, no different from these deer. _I am meat_.

But Roberta Caine would never take the bait.

Jacob waits until Staci separates the skin from the muscle on both legs and hands him back the knife before he viciously demands, “Did you _fuck_ her?”

Surprise.

Surprise is the first thing that Staci registers, not anger, because it was a thought that had certainly crossed Staci's mind when he first made rank within the Hope County Sheriff's Department. Roberta had a reputation that would make any man feel confidant in his odds - and that was precisely why it had been such a crushing blow to Staci's fragile ego when she said 'no'.

Subsequent attempts had become relentless because Staci couldn’t accept 'no’ for an answer.

His frustration with her reached a point where he never tired of reminding Roberta that even though he was six years her junior, _he_ was wearing a badge that should have been hers. _He_ was climbing the ladder of success in twice the time she was because she continued to battle with inner demons. He had even managed to convince himself that the only reason she even had her job in the first place was because she was performing sexual favours for Earl Whitehorse—

Staci peels the skin away from the venison as if he were peeling a human-sized banana.

Once upon a time his treatment of Roberta felt like an appropriate punishment for her turning him down. Now, he thinks, his being left to rot as Jacob Seed's prisoner must feel the exact same way to her.

There is no incentive for Roberta Caine to risk her own neck for an asshole like Staci Pratt—

And the minute Jacob knows that is the minute he receives permission from Joseph to disembowel the deputy in much the same way he's disemboweled these deer.

“No, sir.”

“Is there some _reason_ that Deputy Caine might put off coming to your rescue?” Jacob uses the tip of the very same knife Staci has just used to cut into the deer to tilt his chin up and Staci realises there’s a very real possibility that Jacob will resort to violence if he doesn’t get _something_.

That's when he remembers the Whitetail.

“I—”

But Staci bites his tongue.

A long moment of silence passes before it becomes imperative that Staci say _something_ \- he needs the knife back in order to separate the deer's skin from the joints around the shoulders - but the look in Jacob's eyes is like wildfire. He may be weak under Jacob's gaze, but he's no so weak that he would sell out his only chance at an escape and shoot himself in the foot for the man. In Jacob's current state, he might just kill the Whitetail himself, his fury for Diana's insubordination be damned.

 _Diana's insubordination_...

It's the end of the world for the Project at Eden's Gate and there isn't a single competent hand on deck at St. Francis.

If Staci plays his cards right in this moment and offers up the right tidbit of misleading information, he could become the competency that Jacob so desperately needs.

“There was a… a man,” he offers and his eyes linger on Jacon's steady knife-wielding hand until Jacob offers the tool back in good faith. “A U.S. Marshal. They were close, she might—”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Jacob explodes, his voice bellowing across the Whitetail Mountains.

Staci is lucky to be the one holding the knife.

Anger totally consumes Jacob and the effect is far too similar to his own conditioning to be a coincidence: years of careful restraint come undone over a single string of words, unleashing the monster that lies dormant within the man. He paces as Staci works in silence, hands opening and closing at his sides with force enough to crush steel. His presence alone is enough to make Staci tight around the shoulders.

The only piece of the maniacal tirade that he can make out is a spiteful, “ _Incompetent bitch_.”

The gravity of his own predicament hits him like a punch in the gut.

Marshal Burke is _dead_.

News of Faith Seed's death had trickled down to Staci by means of gossip in the courtyard at St. Francis, but there was never any question about Roberta's fate. Jacob and his men continued to burn effigies in her likeness and remind each prisoner to meet a similar fate that it was only because of _her_ that they were being made to suffer. Safe in the knowledge of Roberta's survival after the liberation of the Henbane River, there was no reason for Staci to worry about the casualties.

After all, he would never expect _Earl Whitehorse_ to rush to his rescue.

Even after all the amendments to his perception of Roberta Caine, Staci still can’t make sense of _that_.

But casualties in Henbane River would hurt Roberta - _bad_.

That explained the appearance of the Whitetail.

Roberta was never good at delegating responsibility - even before she earned her badge - but she would be in no shape to take on Jacob Seed if she had been unable to save Marshal Burke from the clutches of Faith Seed.

All at once Staci feels terrible for ever having doubted Roberta’s integrity as a police officer. She may have been the junior-most deputy with the Hope County Sheriff’s Department on the night they set out to arrest Joseph Seed, but she had always been in it for the right reasons.

That’s more than Staci can say for himself—

“The head,” Jacob barks and all Staci can do is stare up at him in horror because the knife in his shaking hands is inadequate for such a task. “Go on, Peaches.”

When Staci returns his eyes to his work, he doesn’t know where to look.

Those eyes—

He allows his mind to wander back to the first time he met the Whitetail at the Grandview Hotel as he sinks the knife deep into the neck of the deer: her eyes were the colour of green olives from the Garden of Gethsemane, pupils blown wide from the Bliss. There should have been fear in those eyes as they searched his face in the white projector light, but there wasn’t.

 _Wait_ , she had begged him. _Pratt… you’re Deputy Pratt_.

_Who are you?_

But he had never thought to ask.

Guilt overrides the fear as Staci discovers just how little he’s cared about anyone but himself over the course of his life.

As he plunges the knife in deeper, sawing at the bone until his arm grows weary, he discovers just how little his own life is worth now that it’s on the line - and he knows that it’s his own fault. The badge he wore was supposed to signify his duty to the people, but Staci—

The knife severs the spinal cord with a loud _snap_ and the head rolls to a stop against Staci’s boot.

The eyes staring back at him in the dark are not the dead eyes of a deer, but a _man_.


End file.
